A traditional data center may conventionally include a plurality of individual computing resources in one open area having, e.g., four walls. A data center (or other physical space) beneficially has, where possible, an optimized heating and cooling infrastructure. Maintaining data centers at desired temperatures (e.g., set points) helps prevent computer hardware (e.g., information technology (IT) infrastructure) from overheating and malfunctioning. To this end, many data centers are cooled to relatively low temperatures (e.g., 65° F.) to increase equipment reliability and useful life, and to avoid downtime for repair and/or replacement.
Conventional cooling systems cool the entire data center to a temperature well below the set point so that IT equipment operating in the hot spots does not exceed the set point. In other words, existing cooling systems resort to a sort of ‘overkill’ by cooling the entire volume of the data center to well below the set point, which increases operational costs and wastes energy. Moreover, with the increasing awareness and desire to operate in a “green” manner, such excessive use of energy is undesirable.
A service level agreement (frequently abbreviated as SLA) is a part of a service contract where the level of service, e.g., for performing a process, is formally defined. In practice, the term SLA is sometimes used to refer to the contracted delivery time (of the service) or performance. For example, an SLA may be a negotiated agreement between two parties where one is the customer and the other is the service provider. The SLA can be a legally binding formal or informal “contract.”
More specifically, the SLA may record a common understanding about, for example, services, priorities, responsibilities, guarantees and warranties. Each area of service scope may have the “level of service” defined. The SLA may specify the levels of availability, serviceability, performance, operation, or other attributes of the service such as billing. The “level of service” can also be specified as “target” and “minimum,” which allows customers to be informed as to what to expect (the minimum), whilst providing a measurable (average) target value that shows the level of organization performance. In some contracts, penalties may be agreed in the case of non compliance of the SLA. The “agreement” relates to the services the customer receives, and not how the service provider delivers that service.
A data center may begin to process jobs, for example, once they are received by the data center and/or according to a scheduler. That is, for example, a data center may receive a number of processing jobs, e.g., three processing jobs. Moreover, the data center may begin processing these jobs upon receiving them.
However, while some of these jobs may need to be, for example, started right away and/or run at maximum capacity, in order to meet those jobs' SLAs, other jobs may have more time, while remaining in compliance with their respective SLAs, to complete the processing. That is, continuing with the above example, the SLAs for the first job may indicate that this job should be started right away and/or run at maximum capacity, in order to meet the SLA. However, the SLAs for the second and third jobs may indicate that these jobs may not need to be started right away and/or run at maximum capacity in order to maintain compliance with their respective SLAs.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art to overcome the deficiencies and limitations described hereinabove.